but aren’t there a greater number of possibilities that my next words will be not be in English than in English, and therefore a greater probability that what I would say would not be in English?
No. So QM says that at time t every sub atomic particle in your brain has a superposition- a field which gives the possibility that that particle will be found at that location in the field. There is no end to the field but only a very small area will have a non-insignificant probability magnitude. Now scale up to the atomic level. Atoms will similarly have superpositions- these superpositions will be dictated by the superpositions of the subatomic particles which make up the atom. You can keep scaling up. The larger the scale the lower the chances of anything crazy happening is because for an entire atom to be discovered on the other side of the room every particle it is made up of would have to have tunneled ten feet at the same time to the same place. This is true for molecules that make up the entire brain mass. Whatever molecular/brain structural conditions that make you an English speaker at time t are very likely to remain in place at time t2 since their superposition is just a composite of the superpositions of their parts (well not really, my understanding is that it is way more complicated than that, suffice to say that the chances of many particles being discovered away from the peak of their wavefunction is much lower than the chance of finding a single electron outside the peak of its wavefunction).
For our purposes many worlds just says all of the possible outcomes happen. The chances you should assign to experiencing any one of these possibilities are just the chances you should assign to finding yourself in the world in which that possibility happens. Since in nearly all Everett branches you will still be speaking English (nearly all of the particles will have remained in approximately the same place) you should predict that you will never experience un mundo donde personas hablan espanol sin razones!
Heh. Right now, I’m pretty sure the QM does preclude robust, folk understandings of causation. But tell me, what is it that causation gives you that you want so badly?
Thanks, again, this is the type of explanation that helps me to much better understand the possibilities MWI was addressing. And causation just gives me the reasonable expectation that physics models, biology theories, do adequately model our world without worrying about spooking action throwing too big of a monkey wrench into things.
No. So QM says that at time t every sub atomic particle in your brain has a superposition- a field which gives the possibility that that particle will be found at that location in the field. There is no end to the field but only a very small area will have a non-insignificant probability magnitude. Now scale up to the atomic level. Atoms will similarly have superpositions- these superpositions will be dictated by the superpositions of the subatomic particles which make up the atom. You can keep scaling up. The larger the scale the lower the chances of anything crazy happening is because for an entire atom to be discovered on the other side of the room every particle it is made up of would have to have tunneled ten feet at the same time to the same place. This is true for molecules that make up the entire brain mass. Whatever molecular/brain structural conditions that make you an English speaker at time t are very likely to remain in place at time t2 since their superposition is just a composite of the superpositions of their parts (well not really, my understanding is that it is way more complicated than that, suffice to say that the chances of many particles being discovered away from the peak of their wavefunction is much lower than the chance of finding a single electron outside the peak of its wavefunction).
For our purposes many worlds just says all of the possible outcomes happen. The chances you should assign to experiencing any one of these possibilities are just the chances you should assign to finding yourself in the world in which that possibility happens. Since in nearly all Everett branches you will still be speaking English (nearly all of the particles will have remained in approximately the same place) you should predict that you will never experience un mundo donde personas hablan espanol sin razones!
Heh. Right now, I’m pretty sure the QM does preclude robust, folk understandings of causation. But tell me, what is it that causation gives you that you want so badly?
Thanks, again, this is the type of explanation that helps me to much better understand the possibilities MWI was addressing. And causation just gives me the reasonable expectation that physics models, biology theories, do adequately model our world without worrying about spooking action throwing too big of a monkey wrench into things.
Sure. And don’t worry about causation, you can inference and make predictions just fine without it.